


Stacks

by praetorreyna



Series: Baggage [2]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Emotional Hurt, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:14:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22270873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/praetorreyna/pseuds/praetorreyna
Summary: vignettes for Baggage. None of these are in a particular order.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Rose Tico
Series: Baggage [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1612519
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1

The summer air cooled down as the sun set, making the July sky look like cotton candy. The lights from the tin can alley switched on, the darkened area near the house of mirrors becoming an incandescent yellow. Rey felt the cold painted metal that held them in place. Unlike the rest of the carnival, the hall was left unlit, and her stomach churned at the darkness before her.

Her mother told her that it was her favorite attraction when she was Rey's age. Every year she would traverse the building; the exit path was burned into her memory, she claimed. Determined to impress her, Rey insisted she go alone; she was going to escape in record time.

But Rey was lost.

She faced a mirror that distorted her body, twisting her face so much that she didn't even recognize herself. In the darkness of the house of mirrors, Rey's reflection looked monstrous. For a moment she wondered if she looked like this in her nightmares. But it was just her face- hers alone, in the miles she saw through the mirrors.

She couldn't tell which path would lead to the exit and which would lead her back to the start. The longer she spent in there, the more her head began to spin. Her breathing quickened. Each path she went down either led her to another dead end or a glass wall that met her face. Tears started to form in her eyes, and she admitted to herself that she couldn't do it. She couldn't figure it out. She would be stuck here, with the millions of Reys that made her feel small and insignificant.

Rey sat on the floor, the cold metal stinging her legs. It wasn't the first time she felt overwhelmed. She just had to breathe, slower, and let the feeling pass. She could do it. No matter how long it would take, she would do it.

Rey made her way out, on her own. It definitely wasn't a record breaker, but she was proud nonetheless.

She looked around, but through the bustling evening crowd, her mother and father were nowhere to be found. Time started to slow, with every passing moment an eternity in her young eyes. Her parents were nearby, they had to be. She couldn't even reach a sink properly without them. She needed them.

She waited long into the night, the windchill giving her goosebumps. For hours, she staked her hope-they would find her, and they could go home together, as a family. But now, that hope was nothing but a charred bit of coal, its ember slowly fading into darkness. The white tank top she wore now soaked, and tears fell like rain from her face.

She was alone.


	2. Chapter 2

Somehow Rey was convinced to go out to a bar on a Friday night. She would usually be working on assignments for her classes, wrapped up in layers of blankets and listening to Chopin. But she was stuck here for the time being.

The Cantina was flooded with its usual twenty-something crowd all looking for a relief from a long first week of classes. It was too stuffy and too hot. An arid desert would be a relief than the humid swamp that was a university bar on a Friday night. 

At least her friends seemed to be enjoying themselves. Kay and Jess weaved through the crowd like speeding cars, Rose and Rey in tow. Kay yelled something that the bartender somehow understood, and they awaited their drinks. 

A frat boy left the counter bumped into Rey. She stumbled backwards into the person behind her. It takes a moment to for his smell to appear through the sweat and alcohol, but she doesn't need to turn around to know who she bumped into.

Even though it's a thousand degrees, he still wore a black cableknit sweater. His hair was a little disheveled, and when his eyes met Rey's, she noticed his face was flushed and beside him lay two shot glasses. A lightweight. Professor Solo sat adjacent to a ginger haired man, equally as flushed.

"I'm sorry Professor-"

"Ben. My name is Ben," he managed to say, his words bleeding into one another. "Don't I know you?"

Before Rey could respond Kay grabbed her arm and led her to the booth where their friends sat- which happened to be a couple feet from the bar. Rose glued herself to Professor Solo's (Ben's?) ginger friend. From where Rey sat they seemed to really be hitting it off. She hadn't seen her friend with a smile so wide in a long time, if ever.

Out of the four girls, Rose was always the one that fawned over guys. Rey thought she got that habit from watching too many romantic-comedies, but Rose insisted that she would have a love straight out of one. This was one of the few times Rose had the courage to talk to a guy, and the first time the guy’s actually receptive to her. 

"Rey, you need to drink," Jess said as she pushed two mojitos in front of her. "Have some fun! I promise this will be the only time we take you out to a bar until you graduate."

"I'll take your word for it Pava," she replied. Rey needed a distraction, desperately. Keep herself drinking until he left, and she could breathe again without his intoxicating aroma overtaking her thoughts.

Rose somehow convinved with Ben and his friend, Armitage, to take a seat in their booth. Rose, Armitage, and Jess sat at one end with Ben, Rey, and Kay on the other. The booth was only made for four, and Ben's large form pressed against Rey's side, his warmth making her sweat. The sweating may or may not also be a result of his scent making her body overly warm in places she shouldn’t think about in public. 

Okay, Rey thought to herself. It's time to chug these drinks if we're going to be this close.

He was as nice as she imagined, and perhaps downing those mojitos so fast wasn't such a bad idea after all. Inhibitions pushed aside, Rey's shoulders relaxed and she started to get more comfortable with the people around her.

Her thoughts drifted to another place, tuning out the conversations around her. Rose seemed enthralled by Armitage, who clung to her every word. 

Good for her. 

Her gaze then fell on Jess and Kay, who were chattering on about how their days went. Even after over two years together, they still talked as if they were on their first date. 

That's not even fair.

Rey downed two- maybe more, she honestly stopped counting- drinks until she felt like those thoughts were flushed out of her system. It's not right for her to be jealous of her friends. She should be happy and supportive and all that crap she's supposed to be. Instead she feels like her heart was getting squeezed.

"Are you okay?"

His voice, Ben's voice, shaked her out of her state. He takes a napkin and dabs it at the edges of her eyes. She sniffed and smoothed the skirt of her dress. I looked so pretty today too.

"Rey, are you good?" he said.

"I'm okay. Do you know what's going on?"

"I think your friends are at the jukebox dancing. It's just us here." Ben sinks down into the booth. He's across from her now, peering over at her. She's not his student, he's not her teacher. They're just two strangers who got stranded in a bar by their friends.

She looked away, afraid that more tears were making their way through. "I thought my life was going pretty well until today, you know. I didn't need anyone else but my friends. I know I should be happy that they're happy, and I want to be. I do."

"It's fine to not be mated, you know that?"

His statement makes her freeze. "That's wildly inappropriate."

"I meant that you don't have to be tied to someone for your life to be meaningful. Take me for example," he stops to grab a handful of fries and pop them in his mouth as he talks. "My family wanted me to go into business, do something to carry on the family dynasty and whatnot. I said, 'Screw you guys, I'm going to study English and write'. I just went for it. I made some friends and did it all on my own."

"It's hard when all your friends are hitting it off with relationships and you're just the sad single one who's too busy for them to set you up with anyone." Rey leaned over the table to snag one of his fries. He conceded the whole basket, pushing it towards her. A kind act that she cherished in her drunken stupor. "I should just get a cat. Or a dog."

"I have a cat. Sometimes I sneak her into my office."

"I might have to visit your office hours more often then."

In an instant, the magic of booze slips from beneath their feet. Their playful banter came back down to reality; she was an undergrad, and he was her professor. Forbidden only by the laws of the University. In another world Rey was already working at a firm, and they would have gone on a date after this. Ditch their friends like they had done to the two of them and just make the most of the night. But they lived in this one, with codes of conduct and gravity. 

Rey could settle for friends. It's not the first time after all.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose meets Hux.

The moment Rose saw him, she knew it was fate.

He was tall and muscly, with hair a rusty orange and a smile that could kill. He looked like a prince. The ginger man sat next to Professor Solo, who taught her classical literature class. They must be friends, judging by their proximity and the row of shot glasses arranged haphazardly on the bar counter. Rose couldn't hear exactly what they were saying, but it must've been something intelligent, like philosophy or trigonometry or something.

She might have gotten a little buzzed before she and her friends arrived at the bar.

As they waited for their next round of drinks Rey stumbled back into Professor Solo, and her face turned scarlet. Even though the Cantina was loud and sweaty and much too crowded for my taste, Rose could smell a spike of pheromones, presumably coming from the both of them. She watched them exchange niceties, the tension in the air palpable. It all happened in a matter of seconds, but she put a mental note to keep track of those two.

Rose steered Rey towards the booth where Jess and Kay were seated. Before Rose could follow her, the ginger man called after her.

"You come here often?" he said with a smirk.

She turned around, not impressed with his opening line. "Do you use that on a lot of women?"

"Just the pretty ones." He extended a hand to me. "My name's Armitage. But I usually go by Hux."

Rose take his hand in her and shook it. It was firm, and the skin callused. "Rose."

They talked for ages. He grew up in Arkanis, and as soon as he graduated high school he went to West Point where he ended up meeting Ben- or Professor Solo to her. He didn't say much about his childhood, but he prattled on about the different tours he had been on; Kosovo, Afghanistan, even Germany, for a while.

She almost forgot that Professor Solo was right beside her, mulling over a glass of bourbon. She tried to include him in conversation, but he was too invested in his own thoughts.

"Rose!" Jess called from their booth. "Get over here! Bring those guys too!"

The booth was a tight fit. It was meant to sit four, so Armitage offered to grab a chair and sit at the end. Rose managed to squish herself beside Jess and Kay, while Ben tried his best to keep a gap between himself and Rey. Jess slid a mojito over to her, and Rose took a sip from the straw. The coolness of the cocktail was a relief to the sweltering atmosphere of the bar.

As she sipped her cocktail, she told Armitage about her psychology elective. "We're supposed to learn how emotions feed our motivations and why they drive us towards what we want. We even get to do our own research, so I'm pretty excited for this semester."

"What do you want to do after you graduate?" He looked at her intently, clinging onto her every word.

"Right now, graduate school here. I'm hoping to become a therapist and help people individually." She finished off her drink. "What do you think you're going to do while you're here?"

He mulled it over. "I've been trying to become a lieutenant since I graduated. Hopefully, after my next deployment, they'll think I'm worthy of a promotion." Armitage put down his drink and stood from his chair. "Dance with me?"

As the night wore on, their friends started to head home. Everything in between was somewhat of a blur- visions of drinking and dancing were all that she remembered at that point.

Armitage elected to stay with her to sober up, wanting to prolong the night for as long as possible. She remembered walking with him to his car, shooting her shot as she leaped forward to kiss him. He was as warm and intoxicating as she expected, and as he kissed her back it further solidified her hope that he was something special, maybe even The One.


End file.
